<p>son has applied ED at a school, css profile is due 12-1, and primary breadwinner dad (myself) is unemployed in 2010 and I was wondering how I should estimate 2010 income since theoretically I can still get a job before 2010 is done. </p>
<p>Do I assume no income before the yr is over or a min wage job?</p>
<p>Obviously, there is only a month and a half left to 2010, so unlikely that there will be significant amt. What would occur in an ED case where there was an admit decision? Would there be an official css profile done in 2011 after the returns are in?</p>
<p>If you don’t have a job in hand, assume no income.</p>
<p>There will not be another CSS, but the college will want a FAFSA filed in 2011 and rely on the FAFSA info, not the CSS. So if income is somewhat higher on the FAFSA, financial aid will go down.</p>
<p>Can you have your son ask the college to convert the ED application to RD? Unless you have a backup financial plan (such as money in a 529 account), ED is a really bad idea under these circumstances.</p>
<p>It’s a bad idea because if your son gets in, he is legally bound to go to that school and cannot apply to other schools. So if they don’t give you a big enough aid package, you will be up a creek with no paddle!!!</p>
<p>Roderick, once your tax returns are done for 2010, you can make corrections to the CSS Profile on a paper copy of your Profile & sent that copy to the Financial Aid Offices involved. </p>
<p>I know you have already sent another child to college, so I am sure you are familiar with doing this with the Profile. The FAFSA as I am sure you know you can do with estimates & then do the corrections online once your taxes are done. </p>
<p>Will this college let your family out of the ED arrangement if they do not give you enough financial aid?</p>
<p>I do have another kid in college now but had not gone through CSS PRofile with that one. this is the first time for me for CSS profile, ED, unemployment, two kids in college.</p>
<p>Yes, the college will release us from the obligation if the package is not good enough. One of the reasons that we picked this college was for its VG need based FA. If they deny admission, then we will be up a creek without a paddle , or at a community college.</p>
<p>legally bound is probably not the correct language as it implies something that isn’t really happening… ED is more “honor bound” </p>
<p>Roderick, as someone who went through a year unemmployment Jan - Dec the year I had #2 applying for college, remember that any severance will be reflected as income on your taxes so it can be a real whamy on the forms: Unemployment + severance + any withdrawals from equity accounts, etc. Make sure you write into the CSS that you have been unemployed. If S2 had chosen a CSS school I would have been more nervous for year 2 (with salary and no unemployment designation). At least for the FAFSA schools you can report dislocated worker which can open up Perkins as a possibility. Good luck both with the college process and with the job hunt.</p>
<p>Why will you be up a creek? Hopefully your child has apps ready to go to several more schools that meet need?</p>
<p>I do agree, unless your child has applied ED to very generous need based aid schools (and the very best don’t have ED), you might want to switch to RD to compare packages. Schools will handle unemployment differently. And you will want to take a hard look at what the schools will want when you are employed.</p>
<p>yes, he has many in his scope. Only one ED (that, like a good ED school, has all the elements, including affordability, in place), which is in the next to the best class - good need based aid with an ED option. I have discovered that out of 3,700 some schools, maybe 20 - 40 give good need based aid of the form “your AFC (actual) will equal your EFC.”, and the top 10 , maybe 20 are out for us due to too selective. A loan is not really aid. It is orwellian to think otherwise. After all, you gotta pay it back later.</p>
<p>severance doesnt enter into the picture fortunately for FA , but unfortunately for everything else. if he gets in to the ED school - which is a stretch - maybe we can move into his dorm. :)</p>
<p>*It’s a bad idea because if your son gets in, he is legally bound to go to that school and cannot apply to other schools. So if they don’t give you a big enough aid package, you will be up a creek with no paddle!!! *</p>
<p>This is NOT true. there is no “legal obligation.” What gov’t entity ever passed such a law??? There isn’t an ED court.</p>
<p>And, you aren’t even honor-bound to attend if the FA package isn’t enough. You are free to decline if the FA offer isn’t enough.</p>
<p>The main problem is that you can’t compare offers. Another problem is that by the time a student finds out that he hasn’t been admitted (or the the offer wasn’t adequate), it’s often too late to apply to schools that would give good merit…since many have Nov/Dec deadlines for scholarship consideration.</p>
<p>Roderick, it is a bad idea to apply ED because your financial situation is uncertain, and no matter what sort of award the college gives you in December, the award is subject to change when final figures are in. You are setting yourself and your son up for a potentially very difficult situation because:</p>
<p>a. Your son might get accepted and offered an award that seems reasonable now, but when final figures are in the numbers could change – so next April you could be in the sad position of having to tell your son that he can not attend the ED school, when he will have no other options.</p>
<p>b. Your son might get accepted and be given a tentative award in December that is clearly unworkable, because you are still unemployed at that time. So you will have to tell your son to turn down his first choice school – but suppose you get hired for a great job in January – and by the time April rolls around you know that you could have managed the ED school… but its too late. To make matters worse, what if your son doesn’t receive better offers from any comparable school? Your son will have turned down his best college option because he forced himself into making a decision at a time of financial uncertainty.</p>
<p>c. Even if you cannot legally be forced to abide by the binding terms of ED, as a practical matter it will hurt your son’s chances at other schools if he backs out of an ED admission. Many schools share their lists, and at many high schools the counselor will be unsupportive of applications to other private schools. It probably doesn’t take very much for a counselor to doom an application with information submitted in confidence as part of a required counselor report to the colleges. It potentially hurts admission chances for future applicants from that school when ED students back out … so basically it is not a good way to win friends in a process where friends are very important. </p>
<p>If your son applies RD then in the spring he will have an array of schools to choose from, and no matter what, your financial situation will be more clear then than it is now. It may not be better – but you will know more, because you either will have gotten a job or not; if you have found work, you will know what your salary and benefits are; and if you have not found work 4 months down the line, you will at least have a much better picture of what the job market is like and what your prospects are.</p>
<p>When you return to full employment and the following year’s aid significantly reduces, will you be prepared to pay your family contribution? Many families take awhile to recover from being unemployed…they’ve gone thru savings, built up debt, delay home repairs, etc. Recovery can take a couple of years or so.</p>
<p>I was told that unless there are significantly different financial numbers from the Nov estimate and the 2011 actuals, the award will be about the same. This is also a standard line from any school. I do not doubt the school. </p>
<p>I modeled income from a good job for next yr, and it was doable, but thanks for the tips for me to think about.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I have already spoken with FA and they pointed me to their estimator tool and the number yielded from the tool was workable. I am assuming that what they told me is a reliable number for aid is in fact reliable. I wouldnt think for a moment of backing out of the agreement if there is a fairness and consistency in our conversation.</p>
<p>If they did not want my son, why not simply deny him admission? Why give someone meeting Federal poverty guidelines a patently unworkable FA number that would also be in direct contradiction to the school’s cost / FA estimating tool?</p>
<p>But you don’t KNOW what the figures are for this year – you posted a question as to whether or not you should project 0 income for the rest of the year. </p>
<p>And your son is not attending college for 1 year, but for 4. Even if there is no change in figures between December and March – by the time April rolls around you might be aware of big changes for 2011. So – suppose for example the COA at the school is $50K, and you are told that based on 2010 income, your son gets a grant of $45K. Great. </p>
<p>Then suppose you are hired for a terrific job in January, and for your son’s 2nd year of college, you receive notice that he is only getting a grant of $20K – instead of paying $5K for college, now you are expected to come up with $30K for year #2. Only… you have to use a big chunk of the money you earn in 2011 to pay debt that you incur while unemployed – so there isn’t any way you can pay that much for the 2nd year - and you have to tell your son that he can’t return to college.</p>
<p>I had an uncertain, changing financial situation when my d. started college, and as an RD admit, I wrote out a list of “what if” questions and sent them in an email to the financial aid department. In my case the uncertain was about whether or not my other kid would be in college in the same time – and the financial aid director was able to tell me what my aid would be in both situations.</p>
<p>I don’t know what your employment prospects are. You’ve posted in other thread that you have worked in IT/computer programming – so assuming you are good at what you do, it means your earnings capacity could be all over the map. You could get hired by a tech firm that pays top dollar; you could find yourself making ends meet doing temp work and consulting work for small businesses. You’ve also posted a question about calculating home equity – so that’s another complicating factor added to the mix. </p>
<p>It simply does not make sense for anyone to apply ED at a time when their finances are uncertain. You are cutting off options at a time when flexibility is needed. </p>
<p>Maybe you will get lucky and things will work out… but your situation is exactly the kind that has the potential to present huge problems down the line.</p>
<p>hmmm, 30k efc - that would be an interesting problem to have. It would be lucky and unlucky at the same time. We could buy a new stove, but it also might present a challenge for son to go to the expensive college soph yr. but we do have some 401k retirement $. I notice that the CB EFC calc did not ask for this , but just home equity. </p>
<p>does 401 retirement values affect EFC? if so, then why does nt CB’s EFC calculator ask for them?</p>
<p>I ran CB EFC calculator and unless I did something pretty wrong in this calculation, we’d have to have a family income around 150k ish to get that magnitude of EFC. if u have seen my other postings about my industry, thanks to corporations’ abuse of the H1b visa policy , that kind of income is virtually impossible for me to get. In fact, this H1b visa abuse has created a downward spiraling of American IT wages to render me a virtual member of the permanent underclass. In college confidential-ese , that means ~60k income with EFCs of LT $5-6k as the probable wages based on my workmates who did find a job - two states away from his home. Isn’t that Pell country or at least near it - not my friend’s work, but his wages?</p>
<p>ah, with apologies to Tevya, If I had $30k EFC, deeya deeya deeya, all day long I’d …
…not have to go to my brother’s to bake.</p>
<p>Roderick, I think you misunderstand what EFC means. EFC has very little to do with what a private college expects you to pay for college – it is a figure that reflects the bottom line for qualifying for federal aid. I used an example of a college expecting you to pay $30K – you seem to think that you would need to earn 6 figures before a college would ask that much from you. But some of the private colleges that admitted my kids provided financial aid awards that asked that much of me — and I an AGI that typically runs in the mid $40K range. At least one elite college that guarantees to meet full need gave a financial aid package that would have required $25K from us, the same year that another college used “professional judgment” to modify the FAFSA and qualify my daughter of Pell money. (And even that college wanted $10K above and beyond the FAFSA EFC from us)</p>
<p>I had a number of complicating factors, but my home equity alone was enough to know that I had to throw the results of any online aid predictor out the window. </p>
<p>And yes, your 401K can be considered – the CSS profile generally asks for that information, and the colleges want it to get a picture of your true financial situation. It isn’t part of “EFC” calculation – but it is part of the mix that the colleges use in deciding whether or not to give you money.</p>
<p>Let me put it this way: if your EFC is low enough, then your son will be eligible for a Pell grant in the $5K range (I don’t know what the maximum grant is this year, but it generally runs in that area). A low EFC doesn’t qualify for you a dime in college grant money – every college has the discretion to allocate its own funds exactly how they see fit.</p>
<p>Maybe you want to share the name of the college where your son has applied ED? Then you might get some more specific information from cc’ers familiar with that college’s aid policies. Every college is different.</p>
<p>Here is another question, an extension of the one that I originally posted and it is a question asked by the CSS Profile (for ED), what is the estimated 2011 income?</p>
<p>How should an unemployed person answer this one? estimate low or high? What would the consequences be for a too low or a too high - compared to the eventual actual - estimate?</p>
<p>spouse has been and will continue to work; making not too much (<20k).</p>
<p>‘Financial safety’ schools will probably be a state U school with lots of loans and a hemorrhaging of retirement funds. Safety school in admissions or cost usually means ‘assured’, ‘easy’. But as someone in this subforum said, for the needy student, stanford is cheaper, more of a fin. safety, than a UC public school.</p>
<p>for the pursuit of the ‘full need’ school, we are not using a fishing rod as ED might imply, but a wide net with the rest RD. all the CC chance experts say negative on the ED school for son. Thus the wide net.</p>